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President Obama's loss of face last week for his ham-fisted management of the Syrian crisis is bad news for his friend Larry Summers, who's a candidate for the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve. Obama, desperate to polish his badly tarnished image, can't risk a public spanking from Congress on the heels of the Syrian fiasco. Summers probably would engender this sort of rebuke—and much of it from Obama's own party.

That leaves two candidates standing: Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen and former Vice Chairman Donald Kohn, now a scholar at the Brookings Institution. Both have respectable track records, and neither one of them generates much controversy.

SUMMERS IS SMART. He's provocative. He's accessible. He's delightfully sure of himself, sometimes to the point of impatient gruffness, which sows petty resentments. And he's a straight-shooter. But he carries an enormous amount of baggage. Quite a few Democrats loathe Summers, and they are not shy about derogating him. I've been buttonholed on the streets of Washington twice in the past two weeks by Democratic party insiders desperate to vent about him.

Summers' biggest crime in their eyes is that as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton he was a vocal proponent of financial deregulation, which they dogmatically believe caused the credit-system collapse in 2007-2008. Another rap is that he remains too cozy with Wall Street tycoons, who, in their minds, criminally exploited deregulation. Critics begrudge Summers' having made a reported $5 million in one year for advising asset manager D.E. Shaw Group. Hedge funds are anathema to left-wing Robespierres because they exploit the tax code to their benefit through a loophole known as "carried interest," which allows them to claim favorable capital-gains treatment for what critics maintain is actually simple income. Obama often rails against the practice.

If nominated, Summers most likely would be eviscerated during the confirmation process by his fellow Democrats and might not garner enough votes of approval for the job or, at best, garner barely enough votes. Either outcome would be a public rebuke of Obama. Between the Snowden affair and Syria, Obama already has endured more than enough embarrassment for the year. The last thing he needs is a dash of Summers in his serving of humble pie.

According to The Wall Street Journal, three Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, which will vet the nominee, are not hiding the fact that they have it in for Summers. They are populist bomb-thrower Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Brown was one of 20 senators who sent a letter to Obama on July 26 urging him to nominate Yellen. Obama subsequently publicly praised Summers, who served as his economic advisor from January 2009 to November 2010.

The Banking Committee has 12 Democrats and 10 Republicans. The loss of three Democratic votes prior to even being nominated is a very bad portent.

AS FOR THE REPUBLICANS on the Banking Committee, they've been uncharacteristically quiet about Summers. A source told me, "Republicans on the committee want to see a nominee that will continue the Fed's commitment to sound money and a stable inflationary environment, and will give a fair hearing to whomever the president nominates. But I haven't heard a preference for one particular nominee." Translation: They won't foreclose on the opportunity for Obama to shoot himself in the foot again.

In July, the president began dropping the three names of the Federal Reserve Chairman candidates on visits to senators. And though he jumped to Summers' defense when his old friend was savaged by critics, he never identified him as the front-runner. Friday, the White House quickly quashed a rumor in Japan's press that Summer's had been selected.

Yellen would seem to be in the lead, given her support in the Senate among Democrats and because of shrill complaints from Obama's left-wing base that he hasn't placed enough women on perches of federal power.

Yellen chaired the Council of Economic Advisers back in the Clinton administration and later was president of the San Francisco Fed. The current Fed Vice Chairman has delivered six speeches this year. From them, one learns that she is a hawk in regards to capital requirements on financial institutions. She champions more openness and transparency from the Federal Open Market Committee. When the FOMC decision to raise federal-fund rates draws near, she says, it will be "increasingly important for the committee to clearly communicate about how the federal-funds rate will be targeted." She also believes that unemployment is almost double the headline rate, and for this reason, the labor market should "take center stage in the conduct of monetary policy."

KOHN, WHO PUT IN 40 years at the Fed, was a key figure in the government rescue of the financial industry after the housing bubble burst. This role gives him more hands-on experience than Yellen. His role in the government's intervention at insurance giant
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(ticker: AIG), however, left some mud on his suit. Critics claim he was too lenient in paying off big-bank counterparties, foreign as well as domestic, which had purchased credit-default swaps from AIG. The counterparties received face value at a time when the CDS market value clearly was much less. Some critics believed the banks should have received no money from the government at all. Kohn also gets slammed by Monday-morning quarterbacks for having championed Alan Greenspan's view that self-regulation is preferable to government regulation.

Yellen appears to be the safest bet for Obama. And as the president has shown over the past few weeks, he hasn't the stomach for risk. He'd sooner pass the buck to Congress or to Putin than to leave it resting on his Oval Office desk.